Beaver Trail

Beaver Trail is short, only two miles roundtrip, but was certainly sweet today. Continuing my search for Colorado wildflowers of the late spring, I was in the right place, at the right time and day, and the right year to find orchids.

Two days ago on the Ceran St. Vrain Trail I found four fairy slipper orchids, and was deighted at that. Today I found more than 400 of them. At this season, wildflowers are in bloom at the elevation of these trails. Ceran St. Vrain Trail climbs from 8,000 feet to 8,700 feet, while Beaver Trail stays right about 8400 feet.

Endangered and rare, these orchids lay dormant last year, a park ranger told me. Another ranger suggested that I hike the Beaver Trail, when I asked him where I could find wildflowers. They are at their peak today.
I hit the trail early this morning, because the weatherman predicted a thunderstorm this afternoon. While I had some cloudy weather this morning, the clouds seemed to clear every time I wanted to take a picture.

While I took 91 pictures today, almost every one was of fairy slippers. Sometimes in the dark forest I had to set my camera for shutter priority, something that I had learned to do only a few days ago. Then I had asked John to take a photograph of me standing in front of a huge redwood in the photograph that I should have captioned “David and Goliath.” I also worked harder on my pictures today, even getting down on the ground to shot them at their level.